


Defintions

by cleonsyk (lrviolet)



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, 소녀시대 | Girls' Generation | SNSD
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 02:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11072310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lrviolet/pseuds/cleonsyk
Summary: She picks up her matches, lights fire to what is dead, and fuels emotions.





	Defintions

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic way back in 2013 at livejournal. Posting for archive purposes.

It has been –what two years? – a long time, since she sees love in a form of a smirk, square glasses and an executive’s tuxedo. The blue shirt underneath matches a coiled tie, the one she wants to fix herself because Shim Changmin is a mess and will never admit it himself. She happens not to be his wife, nor girlfriend, nor friend for that matter (well, used to be but sometimes she thinks the past knows how to fake too, just like everybody else).  
  
_Why do you hate me?_  Yoona wants to ask him this. She’s sure, so very sure that he does, but the reason is too blurred, unclear, vague **.**  At some point, even unremembered. She wants to know, because the hurt of having to leave things by the clothesline discarded and forgotten overwhelms her, that at some point even if she has promised herself to forget, it comes back.   
  
It always,  _always_  comes back. Which shouldn’t be.  
  
“Ms. Im Yoona? You may take a seat next to Atty. Shim Changmin over here so we can begin the meeting,” says the CEO, and at once the mentioned man turns to her. She feels his eyes on him, as she slowly approaches the table, swivels the chair and sits down, laying her documents on top of the table.  
  
The meeting begins, Yoona avoiding as much as she can the boy beside her who in the same away awkwardly maintains a cordial distance. To live like strangers even though at some point in time she became sure that they have never been wrong together. But maybe that’s just her.  
  
What may have been a result of ridiculous crushes and undefined concern places Yoona’s heart into an abyss, one that she can’t choose whether it’d be safer to go up or stay down here even if it’s dark and cold. She won’t get hurt if she’s alone. No one can harm her, make her cry and all the works. Safe.  
  
Sometimes she wonders why they have to meet again, when she completely has done her best to stay away from the man she doesn’t want to  _see ever again_. Shim Changmin –after being the one who made Yoona believe in love – is a cruel man. A cruel unloving selfish bastard who doesn’t know how to reciprocate petty feelings. That is to Yoona two years ago, so young, inexperienced and naive, and four years later, it comes back: the hurt, the hatred, the  _petty_ feelings.  
  
Shim Changmin points at her sheet, adding, “Unreasonable auditing, Ms. Im.”  
  
She peeks at his version of the analysis. “It doesn’t attest to earlier bank statement records. I suppose we have different results.”  
  
“Well, we’re all professionals here, aren’t we? They are too so I wonder why you can’t trust them.” That insult makes Yoona cringe on the inside, itching for a frown but gives a smile instead without saying another word. Funny how sometimes he seems to read her mind.  
  
The last two hours is too unmoving.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(Because it’s cold and tiresome and every weary heart searches for shelter in embers of such petty feelings, Im Yoona knows she’s still human for it).  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The first time they meet is at Seohyun’s twentieth birthday party where Yoona portrays the loving older sister to her friend and Changmin depicts the moody unshaven prick at one corner of the room who is best friends with Seohyun’s boyfriend. For as the night deepens, they finally find themselves sitting next to each other, squashed for the group picture, with Yoona leaning closer to him because Jung Jessica demands a spot next to the birthday girl.  
  
Seohyun introduces her to Changmin afterwards and the votes for them as the best-looking anonymous coupling of the night escalates out of nowhere. Which both completely disagree, Yoona who is more pressing. He defines bad news, that’s all. From afar for the rest of the night she watches him and his drinking habits, the way he makes sure to fill his glass three-fourths full of that blue margarita. Most of the time she catches herself staring at him, and him staring back, while it becomes a drunk memory to both, she likes to reminisce that it will have been the best first meeting.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
After the first encounter, the following days, weeks, months start easier. They often bump into each other in the streets, at the mall, by the bus stop and Yoona thinks it must be destiny. Changmin thinks she’s starting to become a stalker. Grapevines in the company where she works are where all the important information is, and she hears his name above the rest. A top student. A charismatic leader, son of a billionaire – yada, he can’t be that perfect though.  
  
She hates him. Not jealous, definitely not - but it can’t be helped.  
  
She can’t help herself.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The rest of the moments slip through her fingers, like waking up sober after classical shots the other night, like scaling the moon to fit an imaginary engagement ring, just like how she has fallen in love with an ideal stranger. It is swift, hasty –she doesn’t even remember a time they had went out for a date. They never go out, be titled as girlfriend or boyfriend or that mushy sort because who likes definitions. Aren’t dictionaries made for those?   
  
But she knows, girls get those tingle a lot, sugar rush as one may, it has been love all this time, because even if Changmin has never even decided what they were, he is (-was) there, showing the best of concern when her shoelaces are untied or when she doesn’t have a coat on.  
  
Misleading. Hurtful things. Play pretend, make believe, fool nobody except one’s own heart – she scouts the dictionary for closure, the one Shim Changmin couldn’t give when he once said he loved her, and the next day leave her without saying his usual empty words.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Im Yoona isn’t too good with having to know what she really wants. She gives up on him in the middle of cursing and weeding out the company’s garden during her internship. It rains, pours and showers – they shelter in the nearby covered sidewalk, and she for her petite body structure gets pushed back still at the constant shoving amongst colleagues. She scrambles for an umbrella, and forgets her bag is back in the office, unharmed and drier than anyone stuck here. She looks up, and Changmin is exactly right in front of her.   
  
So close, very close – she’s holding her breathe without realizing it, she doesn’t want any of these recorded into memory. She doesn’t want to remember any scent of his, see him smiling happily and mesmerized by the rain. She doesn’t want to be next to him, she takes a step back, she holds onto the heartache. She’s over, moved on so little heart can’t still be confused. It mustn’t. He’s in love. With someone else. Why, why, why make it so hard?  
  
Yuri saves the day, squeezes to hand her an umbrella despite the pushing, and she winks, points at Changmin with her lips.  _Make a move, Yoona_  – she can read her mind this way. Yoona opens the umbrella, places it above Changmin who looks up, turns around and they exchange out of line bows before they start moving along, with Yuri just to Yoona’s side, the three escaping sweaty brushing of suits and slacks.  
  
She doesn’t want to look because she knows it’ll hurt.  
  
Changmin walks away after a few seconds spent with her, walks away, walks into the rain instead to get wet, get sick, get the fuck out of her life and the rejection, from the coldest man standing, has never taken its toll on Yoona until then. She doesn’t move from the shock, Yuri doesn’t even get it; Yoona gulps, smiles, but doesn’t move on. She wants to call him back – still, what’s the use.  
  
It hasn’t been easier since then either.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It just hurts. Sometimes. It hurts to see him.   
  
How unexplained things mess up in knots and play with your head. Unfair when she answers with brief unrestricted smiles, the corners inched just a bit than usual before her eyes will glisten as she hears his name. And yet, everything else is fake: the questions, care, the denial, the confusion and guilt, even perhaps the hurt, she isn’t too sure about the last, but it’s a corollary entry, an automatic upshot that comes hand in hand with love, with falling in and out of love, then back again, without the man knowing inconsistency’s price.  
  
_Why do you hate me?_  Yoona wants to ask him this.  
  
Why when I have loved you so much, you just wouldn’t know.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(It hurts because after all these sacrifices and valentines, prince charming is nonexistent. That he regrets and takes back everything, sucking them all back in a vacuum of forget-me-nots and daises, and leaving now with his one true love, exactly like how it’s supposed to be. She means nothing to him when he has completely meant the world to her. )  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Ms. Im? The records, please?”  
  
His voice resonates, snaps her out of daydream then and there, she looks at his unchanging features, the man’s beautiful success carved in the way his eyes blinked, or the way his mouth moved to a near-smile, faithfully given to her. No closures given, no formal begins stated – and it has been what Im Yoona wanted to ask him, but she knows he’ll never answer it in a million years.   
  
They’re not words to be defined, after all.


End file.
